[Imc-uk-useability] startpage changes Dec 06

[mish]

Hello all

Some thoughts on the startpage designs that wietse has put together

FEATURES
I think at least two features should be on the front page.  They move
fast enough that having only one could mean a feature would disappear
before most readers see it.  So maybe two features with some text (but
less text than many current features have on the front page) and another
3-5 headlines of features.

PROMOTED WIRE
Having it up with features would be interesting to see how it looks -
repeated as they would also be in the open newswire.  Not sure (either
way)

UPCOMING EVENTS
I would like to keep them up on the front page.  They should be brought
in automatically from the new calendar, but a few items should appear
there.

MOST COMMENTARY
not sure about that.  At the least it would have to be most comments in
the last week/2 days/whatever.  But we would end up with a lot of
fash/anti-fa threads appearing there.  The primary purpose of indymedia
(to me) is for news, not for commenting on/arguing about the news.  I
don't know if I want to encourage/reward it.

Some interesting thoughts on online discussion and the "social
interface" are here
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/NotJustUsability.html

RECENT/POPULAR REGIONS/TOPICS
"headers of region, topic and action pages, with titles of its current
articles. The headers of pages with most recent articles would show."  

I quite like this idea, though many posts would appear in multiple
sections.

Should we go for the sections with the most recent posts?  This would
lead to posts definitely appearing multiple times.  It would also lead
to the displayed sections changing a lot.  This is good for highlighting
all the sections we have, but might be confusing as it would appear to
be quite a random section.

An alternative would be to show the sections with the most posts in the
past week.  This would change less frequently, so would not be so
confusing.  But many sections would never appear.

Not sure which I prefer ...

But either way it would be nice to have the lists of topics/regions etc
display the number of recent posts in each section - say the number
posted in the last week.  So for regions it might look like

All Regions (112)
Birmingham (5)
Cambridge (3)
Leeds/Bradford (6)
Liverpool (5)
London (37)
Manchester (8)
Nottinghamshire (1)
...

***

And here is some discussion wietse and me have had off list - thought I
should throw it in here

> And one little idea to add to the mix is to have a little section for
> showing at least one feature from the global site, and maybe some of
> that newswire.  That way we not only link into our own categories, but
> also link into the wider indy network.  Come to think of it we could
> extend that to import stuff from other imcs in the area.  Bristol,
> Scotland and York spring to mind, and maybe even Ireland (though that
> could be controversial ...)

Some interesting stuff! We thought initially the regions and
action/topic pages which have the most postings would show on the 
startpage, rather then showing them all. But definitely it would be good
to show a bigger regional and global network.

mish

On Sun, 2006-12-10 at 20:45 +0000, WietsE wrote:

> When I spoke to Mish we thought that maybe we could use this email list 
> to work on startpage changes, so thats why I subscribed etc. Anyway, 
> have a look at what I came up with and let's get thing rollin' !
> 
> https://docs.indymedia.org/view/Local/ImcUkStartpageChanges
> 
> Cheers, Wietse
> _______________________________________________
> Imc-uk-useability mailing list
> Imc-uk-useability at lists.indymedia.org
> http://lists.indymedia.org/mailman/listinfo/imc-uk-useability
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